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Otago Daily Times
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Obituary: David Johansen, musician
American singer, songwriter and actor, David Johansen, poses for a portrait circa 1980 at The Old Waldorf in San Francisco, California. Inspired by British glam rock and inspirational to the emergence of punk rock, David Johansen was the face of influential United States band the New York Dolls. A New York native, Johansen gravitated to Andy Warhol's Factory scene. Having cut his teeth in several bands and the theatre industry, Johansen's break came in 1971 when the Dolls then singer Johnny Thunders opted to stick to his bass. Their raucous lifestyle, androgynous look and wild-eyed hard rock earned them a cult following but not commercial success. The band's last show was in December 1976, just before the many bands who had taken their cue from the Dolls look and sound started to make it big. Johansen went solo, with limited success, although his blues/swing alter ego Buster Poindexter did trouble the lower reaches of the charts and one single, a cover of Hot Hot Hot, made the US top 20. The surviving New York Dolls reformed in 2004 for a London festival, touring until 2011. Johansen was also an accomplished actor whose credits included appearances in the films Scrooged and Freejack, as well as TV shows Oz and The Equaliser. David Johansen died on February 28 aged 75. — APL/agencies
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Martin Scorsese Remembers David Johansen: ‘What a Remarkable Artist. What an Amazing Man'
Martin Scorsese has paid tribute to David Johansen, who died on Feb. 28 at age 75. The filmmaker helmed the Johansen doc Personality Crisis: One Night Only, which featured interviews with the New York Dolls frontman and punk rock pioneer. 'With David Johansen, it started with the music, of course. Actually, with a New York Dolls song, 'Personality Crisis.' I heard that song, I can't remember when or where, and it stayed with me. I listened to it obsessively,' Scorsese said in a statement shared with Rolling Stone. 'The sound was rough, the playing was raw, the voice was wildly theatrical and immediate. And the energy was New York, 100 percent pure and uncut, right off the streets. More from Rolling Stone Flashback: David Johansen Appears as the Ghost of Christmas Past in 'Scrooged' Watch the New York Dolls Play 'Jet Boy' and 'Pills' at Their Final Show in 2011 David Johansen, New York Dolls Frontman and Punk Pioneer, Dead at 75 'After the Dolls broke up, I kept watching and listening to David. He never stopped growing as a songwriter and a singer, always exploring, always staking out new paths,' he continued. 'There was the Buster Poindexter alter ego.' In the 2023 film named after the New York Dolls' song 'Personality Crisis,' Scorsese explored the many facets of Johansen's art, including his persona Buster Poindexter, which Johansen didn't expect to take off. He created the act as one not intended to tour, after spending a ton of time on the road with his post New York Dolls band, David Johansen Group. 'With Buster, I can do anything I want,' he said in the film. 'People aren't expecting something else. They come because it's unexpected what I'm gonna do. They kind of trust that it's gonna be good, and it's always good.' Scorsese also noted Johansen's weekly radio show, Mansion of Fun, which the director said he listened to 'obsessively.' 'That was when I understood just how wide and deep David's knowledge of music history was—all of music history, from Debussy to the Cadillacs to Loretta Lynn to the Incredible String Band to Gregorian chants to David's beloved Maria Callas, all of it mysteriously connected.' It was Johansen's love of opera singer Maria Callas that reunited the New York Dolls in 2004 by way of Morrissey. In the documentary, he tells the story in-between songs at a performance at Café Carlyle. '[Morrissey] called me, and he said, 'I understand you're a pretty big Maria Callas fan.'' Johansen explained in the doc. 'And I said, 'Yes, I happen to be known for that in certain circles.' He said, 'Well, you know that film she made where she did a fantastic concert at the Royal Festival Hall?' I said, 'Yes, by heart.' He said, 'How would you like to play the Royal Festival Hall?… All you have to do is get the Dolls back together.' And I thought, 'Royal Festival Hall, Maria Callas…' I combed every opium den in Chinatown, and I pulled that band together. We were fantastic.' Scorsese said that even as Johansen grew 'fragile' (he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor, and in November 2024 he had broken his back in two places following a fall), he would still show up for screening and gatherings along with Mara and Leah Hennessey, Johansen's wife and stepdaughter. 'He would sit quietly, preserve his energy, but he was always fully there, right up to the end,' Scorsese said. 'What a remarkable artist. What an amazing man. I was so lucky to have known him. I just wish there had been more time.' Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Best 'Saturday Night Live' Characters of All Time Denzel Washington's Movies Ranked, From Worst to Best 70 Greatest Comedies of the 21st Century
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
David Johansen, New York Dolls and Buster Pointdexter singer, dead at 75
David Johansen, the charismatic frontman of influential protopunk band the New York Dolls and later the creator of alter ego Buster Poindexter, has died. He was 75. Johansen died Friday at his home in New York City, Jeff Kilgour, a family spokesperson, told The Associated Press. Johnson's health status had been updated by his stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey, in January, as part of a fundraiser with the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund. Hennessy said Johansen had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer during the pandemic and also had a brain tumour. A fall several weeks earlier had left him bedridden and requiring around-the-clock care. "This is the worst pain I've ever experienced in my entire life. I've never been one to ask for help but this is an emergency," Johansen said in an accompanying statement. Johansen's death ends a unique career as a quintessential New York City artist, with turns that also included a recent stint as a deejay on a Sirius XM show and some acting roles, most notably as the cigar-chomping cab driver with rotting teeth (the Ghost of Christmas Past) in 1988's Scrooged starring Bill Murray. Johansen is seen seated while posing for a photograph with fellow New York Dolls members in October 1972. Standing, left to right: Jerry Nolan, Johnny Thunders, Killer Kane and Sylvain Sylvain. ( P. Felix/Daily Express/) Johansen's colourful life was captured in 2023's Personality Crisis, co-directed by Martin Scorcese and David Tedeschi, and executive produced by Ron Howard and Brian Glazer. The title of the documentary came from a handful of enduring songs from the Dolls, a band that was described by leading New York City rock critic Robert Christgau as mixing "early-'60s popsong savvy with late-'60s fast-metal anarchy." A handful of the band's songs became touchstones for punk, alternative and rock bands to know — versions of Personality Crisis would be recorded by Scott Weiland, Sonic Youth and Teenage Fanclub, while Guns 'n' Roses included Human Being on their The Spaghetti Incident covers album. The band, volatile off stage and often leaving destruction in their wake, also favoured heels, makeup and women's clothing. Only Johansen among them could be remotely described as androgynous, resembling Mick Jagger and — to his bandmates — Butch from Our Gang (the Little Rascals). Johansen, right, and Sylvain perform in New York City in October 1973. (Richard Drew/The Associated Press) "I had to go jail [once] dressed like Liza Minnelli," Johansen quipped to a British talk show, captured in Personality Crisis. Johansen was the last to join the band after initially demurring, as described by bandmate Sylvain Sylvain in his 2018 memoir, There's No Bones in Ice Cream. "He dressed like we did, he liked the same music as we did, and he had the same dramatic effect when he walked into a room as we did," said Sylvain. "The girls would stare and the guys would glare." Improbably, despite Johansen's subsequent further afield stints as Poindexter as well as albums of Americana music with backup group Harry Smiths, the three living Dolls at the time reunited for a 2004 Meltdown Festival lineup curated by superfan Morrissey. "England always got the Dolls, and that show was bordering on euphoria," Johansen told Mojo magazine years later. A version of the Dolls piloted by Johansen and Sylvain would go on to record three more studio albums. 'Brats from the outer boroughs' Johansen was born to a Norwegian father and Irish mother in the New York City borough Staten Island on Jan. 9, 1950, the oldest of six kids. "Most of the people in my family sing, dance, are always in plays," he told the Associated Press in the late 1980s. "I was the least inclined in that direction. I'm the one who took it up as a profession." But he grew up entranced by music heard on the radio and from record shops — blues, doo-wop, R&B and early rock — and played in bands as a teen. By 1971, when the New York Dolls began to rehearse, he was eking out a living in underground clothing stores and theatre groups. Johansen performs in New York City in March 2006. (The Associated Press) The original lineup coalesced from acquaintances and high school friends from the outer New York City boroughs - guitarists Johnny Thunders (John Gezale), Sylvain (Ronald Mizrahi), drummer Billy Murcia and bass player Arthur (Killer) Kane. Soon after debuting to paying customers in early 1972, they were making the biggest splash of an underground New York band since the Velvet Underground in the mid-1960s. "They brought a sense of fun and self-awareness to rock and roll, at a time when perhaps things were getting a bit more serious than they needed to be," said Lenny Kaye, rock journalist and Patti Smith Group guitarist, in the 2014 documentary Looking For Johnny: The Legend of Johnny Thunders. Johansen poses for a photograph in Toronto in May 2006. (Aaron Harris/The Canadian Press) David Bowie in September 1972 famously attended a Dolls show at one of their main haunts, the Mercer Arts Centre, housed in a dilapidated hotel that would partially collapse months later, killing four people. They also gained notice in the British music press, with Johansen the most voluble in the band; he once described their proclivities as "trysexual." "It wasn't like we would talk about what we were going to sound like or what we were going to look like or anything, we just kinda did it," Johansen told Mojo decades later. The New York Dolls are photographed in New York City in July 2006. (Jim Cooper/The Associated Press) But during a tour in November 1972, Murcia — described as the least likely member of the band to engage in self-destructive behaviour — died of an accidental overdose. With Jerry Nolan as drummer, the band would debut on disc with a self-titled release produced by Todd Rundgren in 1973. "It takes brats from the outer boroughs to capture the oppressive excitement Manhattan holds for a half-formed human being the way these guys do," Christgau, who wrote in Village Voice and CREEM, said in doling out a rare A-plus review. Future Good Morning in America film critic Joel Siegel, then a reporter for New York's CBS television affiliate, was more bemused, describing a band concert at the time as "always belligerent, hostile and definitely loud." Conflicts with band mates The following year saw the release of Too Much Too Soon, but neither album sold massively, and the band was paired on the road with any number of acts, including odd fits with Canadian bands Rush and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Personality conflicts arose and both Thunders and Nolan were addicted to heroin, with Johansen and Kane said to be heavy drinkers. British music and fashion impresario Malcolm McLaren, who would guide the Sex Pistols, briefly bolstered the Dolls' enthusiasm for several months, though his choice of red leather suits for the band raised eyebrows. The final show of the original lineup was in late 1976, and less than two years later, Johansen was releasing the first of four solo albums that featured contributions from Joe Perry, Ian Hunter, Nona Hendryx and Patti Scialfa. Solo career The solo career saw him open for the Who but didn't lead to commercial success. Tiring of life on the road, by the mid-1980s he was dabbling incognito in New York clubs as Poindexter, with a repertoire of songs, usually decades old, that jumped genres. The song that would launch him to a wider audience in 1987 was actually only a handful of years old — Hot Hot Hot, originally recorded by Caribbean artist, Arrow. Johansen then promoted the first studio album as Poindexter with a series of appearances with the Saturday Night Live house band and a duet with SNL guest host Sigourney Weaver on Baby, It's Cold Outside. Four albums of Poindexter material were recorded in 10 years, though it sometimes felt like he had created a monster. Hot Hot Hot, he said in Personality Crisis, became the "bane of my existence." Post-Scrooged acting roles didn't make as much impact for Johansen, as he appeared in commercial flops Mr. Nanny with Hulk Hogan, Freejack — both he and Jagger had supporting roles — and Let It Ride. The 21s century saw him bounce from passion projects musically, with the Dolls reunited with Rundgren as producer on 2009's Cause I Sez So. In the years before his death, he was sharing his eclectic music knowledge on the Sirius radio show David Johansen's Mansion of Fun. Johansen was the last surviving member of the original New York Dolls lineup. Thunders died of a heroin overdose in 1991, with Nolan following months later after a prolonged illness. Kane died three weeks after the 2004 reunion of leukemia, with Sylvan dying aged 69 in 2021 from cancer.
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
David Johansen, influential singer for proto-punk New York Dolls, dead at 75
By Frank McGurty NEW YORK (Reuters) - David Johansen, the former lead singer for the New York Dolls, whose unvarnished sound and flamboyant style helped inspire punk and glam rock in the 1970s, has died at age 75, his wife Mara Hennessey said on Saturday. "We had a marvelous adventure of a life together," she said, confirming that Johansen had died on Friday afternoon. "He was an extraordinary man." See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. Johansen, perhaps best known for the 1987 party hit "Hot Hot Hot" after he reinvented himself as the lounge singer Buster Poindexter, had been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and had a brain tumor, his daughter Leah Hennessey revealed last month. He had been dealing with cancer for a decade, she wrote in an online appeal for donations to help defray the cost of his medical care. His condition had worsened about five years ago, she said. A native of New York City, Johansen formed the Dolls in 1971 with bassist Arthur Kane, drummer Billy Murcia and guitarists Johnny Thunders and Rick Rivets, who was replaced by Sylvain Sylvain in 1972. Johansen was the last survivor from the band's classic lineup. In its early years, the band released two albums, "New York Dolls" (1973), produced by Todd Rundgren, and "Too Much Too Soon" (1974), with Johansen and Thunders writing most of the material. Neither of the albums were big sellers despite decent reviews. But the Dolls' buzzsaw sound and a style that featured heavy makeup, teased-out hair, high heels and spandex caught the attention of tastemakers and had an outsized influence on rock music in the 1970s and beyond. Critics say the band anticipated the emergence of punk, inspiring bands such as the Ramones, the Damned and the Sex Pistols, while fueling the genres of glam rock and heavy metal. Johansen had "guts" and "oozed style," said Todd Abramson, a music historian and DJ who hosts the Todd-O-Phonic Todd show on WFMU radio in Jersey City, New Jersey. "As ridiculous as some (or most) of his attire was, he made it work! You and I would look like absolute idiots but he looked cool," Abramson said. "And he was able to sound tougher with that New York accent and attitude wearing a dress than most people could have in jeans and a biker jacket." Morrissey, the singer-songwriter who fronted the Smiths and was once president of a New York Dolls fan club, posted a tribute to Johansen on his Morrissey Central website, captioned "RIP" and "NOSOTROS TE AMAMOS!" or "We love you." After the demise of the Dolls, Johansen performed an eclectic mix of jump blues, swing and other genres under the moniker Buster Poindexter, appearing frequently on "Saturday Night Live." Later, he focused on the blues with his band the Harry Smiths, and acted in television and films, notably appearing with Bill Murray in "Scrooged" (1988) as the Ghost of Christmas Past. Johansen's own life was the subject of a 2023 documentary co-directed by Martin Scorcese and David Tedeschi. The film -centered around a New York cabaret performance by Johansen, interspersed with archival footage of the Dolls - highlights the range of his musical tastes. "At his core he was a fan (and not just of music), and he wanted to share his passion with as many people as he could," Abramson said. (Reporting By Frank McGurty in New York; Editing by Nia Williams)
Reuters
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Reuters
David Johansen, influential singer for proto-punk New York Dolls, dead at 75
NEW YORK, March 1 (Reuters) - David Johansen, the former lead singer for the New York Dolls, whose unvarnished sound and flamboyant style helped inspire punk and glam rock in the 1970s, has died at age 75, his wife Mara Hennessey said on Saturday. "We had a marvelous adventure of a life together," she said, confirming that Johansen had died on Friday afternoon. "He was an extraordinary man." Johansen, perhaps best known for the 1987 party hit "Hot Hot Hot" after he reinvented himself as the lounge singer Buster Poindexter, had been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and had a brain tumor, his daughter Leah Hennessey revealed last month. He had been dealing with cancer for a decade, she wrote in an online appeal for donations to help defray the cost of his medical care. His condition had worsened about five years ago, she said. A native of New York City, Johansen formed the Dolls in 1971 with bassist Arthur Kane, drummer Billy Murcia and guitarists Johnny Thunders and Rick Rivets, who was replaced by Sylvain Sylvain in 1972. Johansen was the last survivor from the band's classic lineup. In its early years, the band released two albums, "New York Dolls" (1973), produced by Todd Rundgren, and "Too Much Too Soon" (1974), with Johansen and Thunders writing most of the material. Neither of the albums were big sellers despite decent reviews. But the Dolls' buzzsaw sound and a style that featured heavy makeup, teased-out hair, high heels and spandex caught the attention of tastemakers and had an outsized influence on rock music in the 1970s and beyond. Critics say the band anticipated the emergence of punk, inspiring bands such as the Ramones, the Damned and the Sex Pistols, while fueling the genres of glam rock and heavy metal. Johansen had "guts" and "oozed style," said Todd Abramson, a music historian and DJ who hosts the Todd-O-Phonic Todd show on WFMU radio in Jersey City, New Jersey. "As ridiculous as some (or most) of his attire was, he made it work! You and I would look like absolute idiots but he looked cool," Abramson said. "And he was able to sound tougher with that New York accent and attitude wearing a dress than most people could have in jeans and a biker jacket." Morrissey, the singer-songwriter who fronted the Smiths and was once president of a New York Dolls fan club, posted a tribute to Johansen on his Morrissey Central website, captioned "RIP" and "NOSOTROS TE AMAMOS!" or "We love you." After the demise of the Dolls, Johansen performed an eclectic mix of jump blues, swing and other genres under the moniker Buster Poindexter, appearing frequently on "Saturday Night Live." Later, he focused on the blues with his band the Harry Smiths, and acted in television and films, notably appearing with Bill Murray in "Scrooged" (1988) as the Ghost of Christmas Past. Johansen's own life was the subject of a 2023 documentary co-directed by Martin Scorcese and David Tedeschi. The film -centered around a New York cabaret performance by Johansen, interspersed with archival footage of the Dolls - highlights the range of his musical tastes. "At his core he was a fan (and not just of music), and he wanted to share his passion with as many people as he could," Abramson said.
